Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

I support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Armstrong. I appreciate having this opportunity to discuss in more detail family group decision-making. I welcome the measures in the Bill that seek to offer families the chance to build solutions together that can secure their children’s welfare and give them agency.

I am pleased that we are seeing support across the House for family group decision-making; that is a very positive start. My interest in supporting these amendments is about ensuring that the process is strong enough to drive and deliver the outcomes that we all want to see, so that children have better outcomes and more can safely stay with families. We have heard about that at length because of the evidence surrounding it.

I declare an interest as the executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives; I also share an office building with foundations of which my noble friend Lady Armstrong is a trustee. My experience with this, and my relationship with those organisations, goes back decades. Over that time, I have been convinced of the benefits of family group conferencing, having spoken to and worked with professionals, families and children who have gone through that process. When I first found out about it, I did not approach it as a professional who knew about that area of practice. Instead, I spoke to family members who found themselves in a situation that was spiralling out of control; they did not feel that they had any agency to provide support for family members. They had come across family group conferencing as something that their local authority had already been testing, and through it they found themselves at the centre of shaping an outcome that was much more favourable to them and their siblings.

With the amendments, we are looking at moving from a decision-making meeting that might fall foul of box-ticking tendencies, to a process that has strength and an understanding of the need for experienced leadership, trained co-ordinators and a wider network beyond the family. Some people might think that that is strange, but we all define our support networks very differently, and our wider networks can have a very strong impact on our life. As has been said, these amendments have a child-centric approach that has, as a default, the need to include children in the process.

My experience with families that have been through this, and indeed with others in the family, is that it has been transformational at a time when families often find themselves without any agency in a process that they feel is going only one way. If you have this as part of the recognised local authority system, it can be understood by families and by professionals. It is not just a whim of the director of children’s services at the time; it can be baked into the wider process of family support. It is of course so important to link this very closely with early intervention.

There are two things I wanted to say in addition. First, this will really strengthen that protection for children. This speaks to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, talked about: most families whose children end up in care are actually in a position of adversity. The Leeds Relational Practice Centre estimates that 90% of children are in care because of family adversity. This speaks to supporting those families, and it is right to do so. Secondly, it is not a soft option. This is challenging work for everyone involved, and the bars are high.

Finally, I too have been speaking to directors of children’s services. Most are very enthusiastic about family group conferencing and completely enthusiastic about the ambitions and intent of the Bill. I have a list of those directors of children’s services, and of the 82% of local authorities who now have family group conferencing as part of what they do. Sometimes, that is done in a small way that can be built upon, but there is a long list of authorities with a huge track record of making this work and the evidence to show that it brings better outcomes for children and families.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 14, already very ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. I want to widen the political breadth of support for the family group decision-making process by strongly offering the Green Party’s support.

Amendment 14 differs from the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, which refers just to 16 and 17 year-olds. It is more expansive than the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, in that it stresses the need to make every effort to ascertain the child’s wishes and feelings and give due consideration to them.

However, it is worth noting that all the amendments in this group and the associated amendments reflect, as others have said, briefings from the Children’s Charities Coalition and the Family Rights Group, which are saying, as other noble Lords have said, that the Government are going in the right direction but the Bill needs to be strengthened and made clearer, which is what this amendment and others seek to do.

In backing this amendment, I am reflecting statements I have been making in your Lordships’ House and amendments I have been tabling and signing, going back a considerable distance to the Health and Social Care Act and the Mental Health Bill. They are about listening to children and ensuring they have agency.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the survey showing that almost three-quarters of children—some 73%—feel that they are not listened to by politicians. We know there is a mental health crisis, particularly among our young people. Psychologists tell us that, as is clear to us from a common-sense perspective, not having a sense of agency or feeling as if you have control or are being listened to is damaging to your mental health.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s report from 2023 raised concerns about the significant barriers to the meaningful engagement of children in decision-making in the UK, particularly the seldom heard and marginalised group of children we are speaking about here, who are likely to be involved in family group decision-making processes. We have to ensure that people are listened to and feel that they have agency. This amendment takes us in the right direction in a constructive way, and I hope we will hear from the Minister that we will at least be taking steps in this direction.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, and to have the former Children’s Commissioner in this House. This is a good Bill but, like all Bills, it could be better. I support Amendments 3, 13, 14 and 18.

In 1988, I wrote a report, having been chairman of the Cleveland child abuse inquiry. In my report, I said that children should be listened to. I also said that children were people and not objects of concern. I remember talking as recently as last year to a young person whom nobody had told what was happening to him. He had no idea until he was moved. This is very serious. It is not just that nobody took any notice of what I said; the fact is, everybody else has been saying it. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the voice of the child. The voice of the child is crucial at all stages of what happens to children.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise in the middle of a long, important and well-informed debate. I first felt it was getting to the heart of what this Bill really should be about with the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. He showed appropriate preparedness to accept responsibility for the state of childhood in the UK today, with many children being failed by expulsion, off-rolling and schools that in no way meet their needs, suppress their energy and enthusiasm and fail to value their talents.

We are so keen on league tables, but why are we not focusing every day on the fact that the UK is ranked lowest in Europe in children’s well-being? That reflects the poverty, poor housing and poor food that so many children are forced to survive—the kind of systemic obstacles the Minister referred to in her introduction. I am very keen to see the Government doing a lot more about that—see the two-child benefit cap—but I am also sad to say that it reflects the very structure, nature and direction of our schools.

The two parts of this Bill, sadly, are working against each other. Schools are damaging well-being, and that is not how it should be.

I stress that I am blaming not teachers—who are forced to turn their classrooms into exam factories and their corridors into battlegrounds, suppressing all the natural inclinations of young people—but the directions from the centre, from successive Governments in Westminster who have seized control from local authorities, removing local democratic control, and enforced their own ideas and those of commercially linked giant academy chains.

I will focus briefly on one school, Southchurch High School in Southend-on-Sea. It has just brought in so-called silent transitions, where being caught saying a word to a friend or exclaiming in anger during the changeover between lessons will result in a one-hour detention. One parent of a neurodivergent child shared how impossible it would be for his son to cope with the rule, reflecting points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Parents are horrified—500 people have signed a petition, and the local Labour council cabinet member has expressed concern—but schools are not under local democratic control, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, highlighted. All parents can do is vote with their feet by walking away with their children, as so many parents I have met have been forced to do.

The final part of my speech will be in the form of a list of issues to which we Greens expect to return in Committee, reflecting some of the issues raised by our honourable friends in the other place and adding a few more.

First, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who cannot be here today, will deal with the grave concerns that many home-educating parents have about the Bill, drawing on her personal experience.

I will put a particular focus—building on work I did on the Domestic Abuse Bill when very new to this House—on extending to children in England the same protection from assault that children in Scotland and Wales have enjoyed, the so-called smacking ban that is surely long overdue.

Reflecting my membership of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation, I will call for a duty on local authorities to notify their schools and GPs about the circumstances of children so placed.

We Greens may find common cause with the Liberal Democrats in an effort to extend free school lunches to all primary school children.

I will support a number of noble Lords who have already indicated plans to table an amendment to introduce a national programme to regularly measure and report on the mental health and well-being of children and young people in schools.

I will seek to establish a right to nature for children, something to help both their well-being and their education.

My final point is something new. Soon after I came into your Lordships’ House, I was horrified to learn that there was still Afro hair discrimination in our society and our schools. You would think it was illegal under the Equality Act, and it should be, but hair texture is not explicitly named as a protected characteristic. Pupils are still being told in school that their hair is “too big”. What does it do to a child to be so labelled? That is one example of the way in which echoes of the genocidal, ecocidal British Empire continue in the attitudes that too many young people encounter in our schools today. Getting free of that imperial past, and so many inherited Victorian-era ideas about how schools should be, is central to building a healthy future for our children.

Universities: Free Speech

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

We will take the noble Lord, Lord Alton.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

It is wholly wrong if those events are not able to take place on our campuses or if there is interference in the very important research that our universities are taking part in. That is primarily the responsibility of the higher education institutions themselves, but I am absolutely clear that that is an important part of what should be happening in our universities.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords—

Gavi: Covid-19

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, yes, the UK is working very closely with international financial institutions such as the World Bank to bridge the gap in funding.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I note that, as well as giving money to Gavi, the Government are also funding UK-based efforts such as that at the University of Oxford. Given the multiplier advantages of combining funds with others—the fact that there is no way of knowing which of the hundreds of vaccine efforts around the world will be successful and that no one is safe until all are safe—how are the Government deciding the division of funds between national efforts and international efforts such as Gavi?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness highlights, we are doing both. We are investing here in the UK and we are also investing in Gavi, CEPI and many other organisations. We also support the WHO’s Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, an action plan to accelerate the development and production of, and equitable access to, new Covid-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.

Female Genital Mutilation

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I certainly agree that we cannot end FGM in the UK without tackling it globally. That is why we are supporting the Africa-led movement to end FGM and why we are supporting activists and organisations here in the UK. We have made some good progress here in the UK: we have introduced several protection orders and mandatory reporting for girls. That is all working to help to break the cycle of FGM for good.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Following on from that question, does the Minister agree that there are grass-roots activists who have to flee to the UK and seek asylum and refuge here? Is she confident that the Home Office is providing the refuge that it should, both for activists against FGM and for girls at risk of FGM?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, we work closely with the Home Office to ensure that people who are fleeing the practice of FGM are very carefully looked after.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, important points have been made about UK citizens in other European countries, and my noble friend Lady Miller and I have an amendment on one aspect of that which I think will be taken on Thursday.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, referred to permanent residence status. I understand that while the numbers of people applying for permanent residence have dropped a bit, as one would expect given the rollout of the settled status scheme, they are still significantly higher than they were before 2016. One can only speculate about the reasons for that—I do not think we can know what they are—but permanent residence provided documentary evidence, and the physical evidence available through that route may well have been a reason for the high number of applications.

Points have also been made this afternoon about immigration rules. I cannot let the occasion go by without saying how much I would welcome rules that are simpler and cannot be changed without going through full scrutiny and parliamentary process.

I will make a couple of points on these amendments, which I wholeheartedly support. One is the importance of ensuring that people who have some sort of status are not impeded in travelling. I have come across this in connection with independent leave to remain obtained by a refugee, only the latest of a number of examples I have heard of people who have had problems with travel documents. There is something about not fitting the boxes that officials are given and need to tick. We must make sure that those with settled status can properly exercise their rights and come in and out of this country freely.

My other point was mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, last night in summing up the debate. He said that there will be an “automatic reminder” to those with pre-settled status to apply for settled status. I urge the Government to work with the embassies and the groups that have been so involved in this process and made such helpful interventions and comments to ensure that whatever very necessary arrangements they put in place to remind people both that they will have to apply for settled status and that pre-settled status is different will work as well and efficiently as possible—taking account of human frailty, if you like.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I support both these amendments. I will begin with the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, from the end of our very long day yesterday:

“EU citizens in the United Kingdom are our neighbours, colleagues and workplace friends, and of course we value the contribution they make to the United Kingdom and wish them to remain here.”—[Official Report, 13/1/20; col. 552.]


I contrast that with a report from 10 October, when the Security Minister, Brandon Lewis, was quoted as saying that EU citizens who do not apply for settled status face deportation.

I ask your Lordships to put yourselves in the shoes of an affected citizen here in the UK, who may have come here quite recently or have been here for many decades, and think about which set of words you will have heard more clearly, which set of words will be affecting your sentiment and understanding of your place in the United Kingdom. I think everyone knows that what people will be hearing, worrying about and fearing are the words “threatened with deportation”. We are talking about up to 4 million people being affected. The latest figure I have seen is that 2.5 million people have applied for settled status. However, as the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said, there are also the 1.4 million UK citizens across Europe, for whom reciprocity means that they will be affected by how we treat their fellows here in the UK.

My arguments for these amendments fit into two groups. First, there are the practical arguments. As many noble Lords have said, to have a physical document will be immensely useful in dealing with landlords and immigration—just knowing that it is in your wallet or purse. There is also the fact that to have a declaratory scheme is far easier and far less daunting. That is a practical benefit. Those are the practical advantages. But there is also the question of sentiment—sending a message of welcome to our EU and other friends who are part of our communities. I urge noble Lords to back these two amendments, to back the message which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, delivered last night and which the Government say they want to send to these citizens.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments, which were introduced by my noble friend Lord Oates and which are in his name and those of the noble Lords, Lord McNicol and Lord Kerslake.

I too was pleased to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, say last night that those with pre-settled status would

“receive an automatic reminder to apply for settled status before their leave expires.”—[Official Report, 13/1/20; col. 552.]

I may have lost track of this issue, but is that new? I do not remember it. I remember that we on the EU Justice Sub-Committee asked repeatedly for that to happen, as well as for physical proof of status. Perhaps it is not new, but I do not recall when I was on that sub-committee that that system had been set up by the Government, and I am pleased that it now exists. Perhaps the Minister could explain whether it is new.

Some of us worry about 40% of people getting pre-settled status. Have the Government been able to do any surveys or analysis of how many people genuinely do not have the five years’ residence they need for settled status, or of those who give up because they have not managed to provide the evidence that is required for five years, some of which might be a little challenging to provide?

In a different context, I read in the papers about people who have had real problems convincing HMRC—regarding the years they need to clock up for a state pension—that its records are wrong about national insurance contributions. People have talked about how it has taken a year’s effort to persuade HMRC that they did indeed make national insurance contributions in a particular year. So the part of the supplying of evidence that relies on HMRC and DWP records may or may not be accurate. Some people might be struggling.

Can the Minister tell us whether there is any analysis of how many people genuinely do not have five years’ residence, and of those who are having difficulty providing the necessary evidence? A lot of us are very concerned about this. I agree that the Home Office appears to be putting good effort into it—some of my colleagues went to Liverpool; I did not manage to do that. None the less, the consequences come June of next year of people not having settled status are so severe that we cannot afford to overlook any possible problem—of course, I support the proposal that we pursued on the EU Justice Sub-Committee that applicants should get physical proof. We never managed to get, to my satisfaction at least, a good answer from the Home Office on why it refused to countenance that. I am sure the Minister will give us that answer.

That tracks into the fact that, as my noble friend said, there are people with permanent residence who believe, wrongly, that they do not need to apply for settled status. That adds to the concern about people who may find themselves bereft in 18 months’ time.

International Sustainability: Natural Resources and Biodiversity

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I join many others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for arranging this crucial debate. Noble Lords may not be surprised that, as a member of the Green Party, I am standing up to talk about natural resources and biodiversity, but it might be useful for them to know that I also have a background in the international development side of this debate. I spent more than four years in Thailand working on a number of UN reports, including on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and, in the late 1990s, on women’s health and child labour.

I shall begin by perhaps surprising the House by saying that I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie, when he expressed concern that the amount of government aid going to pro-poor funding has gone down. However, where I disagree with him is that there is any conflict at all between action on the climate emergency and action on helping the poor. What we need is, in the jargon, a just transition that caters to the poor while also looking after the planet.

At the weekend I was speaking at a debate with a young campaigner from the 10:10 organisation and she used a very memorable phrase: “You don’t fix the problems that we have now with the system that created them”. The fact is that fossil-fuel societies have created a deeply unequal world in which many are suffering from the poverty and hunger that many noble Lords have referred to. Many will be familiar with the term “the resource curse”. Even in countries that have lots of resources—fossil fuels and other minerals—the poor have suffered and have not benefited from them. Therefore, the fact that we can now do without fossil fuels is, I believe, something to celebrate for the poor of the world. However, that is not the direction being taken by Britain’s international aid effort. The Environmental Audit Committee has focused on the fact that in the last five years UK Export Finance has put £2.5 billion into fossil fuel finance.

There is a term that is really important in this context—lock-in. By building the infrastructure, you lock in potential emissions for many years to come and, if you stop those emissions, you waste huge amounts of money and leave people trapped. I refer the Minister to a report in Nature Communications in January 2018 by Dr Chris Smith of the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds—I would be happy to provide her with a reference. It is a very important and, I believe, hopeful report because it stresses that if at the end of 2018 we had stopped investing in fossil fuel infrastructure all around the world, we could, using existing infrastructure, have just come in under 1.5 degrees centigrade of warming. Ending new fossil fuel infrastructure is crucial, so the UK should not be funding this.

I turn to my particular passion: food and agriculture. The UK’s efforts in this area include a programme called Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters, which says that it plans to use the techniques of climate-smart agriculture. I ask the Minister to reconsider and think very hard about this. The term “climate-smart agriculture” has no definitional meaning; there is no classification system for it as there is, for example, for the organic agriculture that I spoke about earlier. But most people who propound climate-smart agriculture would agree that, essentially, it means doing the kind of farming that we do now but much more efficiently. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, who referred to the importance of “no till” and “minimum till”. As the right reverend Prelate said earlier, we have trashed our own soils; our farming methods have done great damage. We have to make sure that we are not exporting these methods with our aid efforts.

Another programme supported by the UK aid effort with funding is an organisation called AgDevCo. I looked up the kind of projects that it supports. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, referred to palm oil plantations and the damage that they are doing. This organisation supports palm oil plantations and cashew nuts; it supports macadamia exports and avocado growers in Kenya; and it supports the Ugandan coffee sector. These are traditional export-oriented, high-input, deeply damaging forms of agriculture. I applaud the keyhole gardens referred to by the noble Lord, Lord German. These are the kinds of permaculture- based, agro-ecological approaches that must be the future, providing food security for the poor, and for us all, on a stable planet.

We have been talking in the debate about biodiversity. Most speakers have referred to the idea of natural, wild biodiversity. I want briefly to mention the importance of crop biodiversity, because 20% of human calories come from one crop: wheat. In food security terms, that is incredibly dangerous. One noble Lord referred to giant, industrial-scale monoculture—huge fields of identical crops, which cannot be the biological future for this planet. Crop biodiversity is also about human health. I refer to another study, from Tanzania, in Ecological Economics, which looked at how crop biodiversity fed into the health of children. The study found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that children who had a more diverse diet were healthier. This effect was most evident in subsistence-farming households and for children in households with limited market access. This is the kind of agriculture that we need to support.

I will briefly address—

[Lord Judd]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I am very interested in this part of her speech, which, I must say, reminds me a great deal of my own work in Africa. Does she agree that one period of history at which we should look very critically is when top-down cash crops were promoted despite the fact that local communities had self-sustaining systems of their own; we now realise that such systems are exactly what we need. There are great lessons to be learned from this. Perhaps she would also agree that it is not a matter of lecturing people in the third world on what they must do, but of setting examples ourselves.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

I entirely agree with everything the noble Lord just said. I think your Lordships’ are likely to hear me refer often to the importance of strong local economies in which a large amount of the food on the plate comes from not very far away. That is true around the world. We are talking about the aid effort here. What we want to do is support people and help them develop and work on their local systems.

The noble Lords, Lord Bruce and Lord Cameron, mentioned the issue of population. I often hear the question, “Why are we not talking about population?” The IPCC says we have 11 years to turn our planet around. The human ecological footprint is a product of the equation of the number of people on the planet multiplied by their consumption levels. The number of people on the planet will not change very significantly in the next 12 years. What we have to change is the consumption levels, particularly those of societies such as Britain: we are using our share of the resources of three planets every year, yet we have only one. However, if we were to talk about international aid going to women’s rights to control their own bodies and have access to contraceptives, abortion, economic opportunities and education, perhaps we could find some points of agreement.

I am aware that I have taken quite a bit of time. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, made a really important point that I want to come back to, because I think it should be highlighted and be the takeaway message from this debate. She asked the Minister whether we should first do no harm with our aid. That is a very important question and it should surely be answered only in the affirmative. We cannot afford the harm of funding new fossil fuel infrastructure, or of funding, supporting or encouraging types of agriculture that trash the planet and fail to provide food security. We cannot afford to support the growing of crops to be fed to animals in industrial agriculture. That is food waste, and I think this House would generally agree that food waste is a bad thing. The simple question I would like to leave with the Minister is this: whatever role she may play after the election, could she work on ensuring we have an aid policy that first does no harm?